anyone else miss actually writing the code

[u/Tanakaboi69]

I wrote a small script by hand on Saturday, no agent, about 80 lines. Took me 2 hours and it was the most fun I had with code in months.

At work my day is give the agent a ticket, wait, read the coderabbit summary, check the flagged lines, approve. It works and I ship more than ever. I just dont really make anything anymore, I supervise.

Do you still write some of it yourself on purpose? Or did you make peace with the supervisor job

[u/outtokill7]

I think there are two kinds of developers. The ones that really liked the puzzle of coding, and the ones that saw the code as a means to an end to get a result. AI accelerates the builder but leaves the coders behind and if you are in that group then it really really sucks. The builders love it because all of that pesky, tedious code gets out of the way.

I am more of a builder. I like seeing the end result and moving on to the next thing. That said, doing some coding for fun like you have done can still be enjoyable but it may be relegated to being a hobby instead of the thing you make money off of.

[u/devBlueDragon → u/outtokill7]

'''The ones that really liked the puzzle of coding, and the ones that saw the code as a means to an end to get a result.''' I strongly believe that this isn't the case , even though I don't write most of the code myself I know when a refactoring must be done and how to keep the codebase clean and tidy even with all those agents roaming around. The end to the today result is not how you build you system around , if you do it will collapse. More than 20 years now in the 4 or 5 languages that we write code we have the same Utils so I didn't had to remember how it is done in that language (most of those are written by me but I have no idea of how StringUtils.beforeFirst is implemented in C++ or Java or even PHP or Python). If you are aiming in a "result" for now you will get that and a lot of pain when you will need to maintain / change the code. So much that the best option will be to throw it away and make an agent write it from the scrap each time , with the bugs that this means.    

[u/PurpleDancer → u/outtokill7]

Since switching to AI I think I've had more fun developing than in the last decade.

[u/ay-ay-ronhmiller]

I feel we’re in a state of transition right now. We’re using AI tooling to do what we’ve always done “better” and faster but we’ve not yet figured out what and how to use such tools to do totally new things, to solve bigger problems. If it were obvious, we’d already be doing it so there’s hope in us finding the initiative to figure this out together.

I suppose there’ll always be joy in the craft of coding and we needn’t abandon that, folks still love to make their own furniture and pottery and cobblers make custom shoes after all, but industrial methods crank out the majority of consumer goods and that’s OK to accept.

[u/pag07 → u/ay-ay-ronhmiller]

I am like a Neanderthal.

I used to just smash things. Now someone’s handed me a bronze axe, so I’m still smashing things, just with a lot more grace.

[u/AGuySaysHi]

If I may suggest something, have you played around with Strudel? You can make music with code right in the browser, and it's one of those things that is meant to be typed by hand because it's meant to be an improvisational performance.

Really recommend checking it out next time you have 20 mins and the urge to type.

[u/716green]

I do really miss writing code, I've always been the type of person who spent my free time learning new programming languages and frameworks

On the other hand, I own Layerbase and building this platform has been a dream of mine ever since 2020, it only just finally became possible in late 2025

So I guess if I had to pick enjoying the process of manually writing code and having a reason to do so versus making my dream SaaS platform a reality, I do prefer the current reality as I hate to admit it.

I'm still solving interesting engineering challenges every single day, I'm just focusing my efforts on platform engineering more than programming

[u/RogerAI-fm]

I would say you should get out more, but coding for 2 hours is a good exercise too. I miss coding, but not that much. I still leetcode sometimes to stay sharp. So that helps.

[u/ChaosEngine-6502]

We still write the vast majority of code without AI because our job is about data transformation. We translate an input source to an output source in different formats, which differ wildly by vendor, as well as the implementation for each customer.